


Rest Your Bloodied Feet

by AuntieEm30



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Non-Violent Death, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 09:39:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12909264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuntieEm30/pseuds/AuntieEm30
Summary: A post-epilogue epilogue of "Who Are You?" by I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning, with permission.  A Master left behind is reunited with his Padawan in the Force.





	Rest Your Bloodied Feet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning/gifts).



> Warning for possibly some time-line liberty taken, and my bullshitted science toward the end. The reunion ended up being less of the whole fic than I'd thought, but that's pantsing-it for ya.

It was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.

He’d spoken of it simply to Skywalker, but the truth was that pushing forward - surviving - was like walking on cut and bleeding and infected feet.

Every step brought new pain.

And as much as he’d thought he knew better, he was still somehow caught off guard by it. He’d been Obi-Wan’s Master for less than a year.

But in that less-than-a-year, the frightened boy in a broken man’s body had lived with him, fought beside him, learned from him, looked up to him. Trusted him - and look how it ended.

He’d offered to train Obi-Wan in the first place to make amends for never having intervened on his behalf with Qui-Gon. Mace maintained that Qui-Gon, while his friend and mostly a good Jedi, hadn’t been a healthy Master for the boy.

But Qui-Gon obviously hadn’t been as cooly effective at teaching Obi-Wan to lay down his life for the cause. He had that going for him. He’d never had to live through Obi-Wan’s death.

Mace honestly hadn’t heard or processed the very first words Jedi Master Obi-Wan spoke when he resurfaced, just before passing out again. Instead, he’d been slumping back to sit against the wall, his knees rising to press against his chest, his hands rising to his temples, as if base flesh and bone could push out the searing empty place where the bond had been only seconds before. He’d trembled, and sobbed silently.

He’d tried so hard to always do the right thing. Why did it have to hurt so much?

The flurry of motion and intent surrounding the transportation of Obi-Wan to the medical bay helped take him out of his head, somewhat. By the time Obi-Wan had been stabilized and settled in his bed, the Knight and the Master at his side, he’d had a much better handle on himself. He’d scrounged the strength he could and tied a tourniquet of the Force in that part of his mind so he could do his duty.

But any healer, any medic worth their credentials would tell you a tourniquet is not meant for long term use.

When the time shortly came that he returned to Coruscant and made himself pack up Obi— his Padawan’s room, surrounded by his meager possessions and engulfed in the echoes of his presence, the psychic torment he unintentionally released had brought a mind healer running from across the Temple. He’d woken up from sedation in the Healing Halls, to one of the most angry yet tearful lectures of his life. 

He’d left the Halls a day later, with a heavy heart but a properly stitched mind.

He made himself start walking on his bleeding, lonely feet.

And when Jedi Master Obi-Wan approached him, beaten down with the weight of his knowledge and so full of remorse, knowing what his survival had cost Mace, the Korun Master had seen the body that’d housed the boy he loved, but it was the scarred and broken man that he’d knowingly reached out and embraced.

They worked together, Skywalker assisting, to secure rights and a future beyond the battlefield for the clones. They and the rest of the Council began gently pushing the Jedi Order back to what it was meant to do: smaller conflict resolution, overseeing negotiations, disaster relief.

Rebuilding.

He helped Master Koon continue young Kanan’s training in Depa’s stead, though more distantly. And when she finally awoke from the coma that had held her captive so long, he helped her heal and adjust and resume her life. If he checked in on her and kept her company more than his reputation as a serene and detached Jedi Master perhaps warranted, no one commented.

He pushed forward.

He taught classes now and then, and he made certain Kanan and Depa still knew they could come to him for anything, but he never took another Padawan of his own. 

The infection drained over time, and the cuts scabbed over and eventually scarred, and slowly the pain lessened.

It never went away, but he still determinedly lived.

And now, here he was. Fifteen years later, and he, Mace Windu, was dying from a damn mechanical mishap. 

Where the hell was Skywalker when you needed him?

Oh, that’s right. Retired from the Order with his no-longer-secret wife, their two children now Padawans themselves (though of course Skywalker and Amidala would hear nothing of being completely separated from their children like everyone else. They’d started something of a grassroots trend. Mace couldn’t be bothered to be annoyed anymore).

The ships used by the GAR had been repurposed for disaster relief missions. The current batch of refugees were being transported from a planet ravaged by ionic storms made lethal by recent chemical industrialism. The gasses the mutated storms released were highly toxic.

The protective gear the team had been using worked just fine. No, it was the magnetic pressure fluctuations caused by the nearing storm that had caused some critical internal wiring to fritz, knocking out life support in the boarding bay just as they were taking off. Knowing his mechanical skills weren’t strong enough to bank on being able to fix it before the other compartments started feeling the effects as well, he cut his losses and secured the hatch leading from the bay to the corridor beyond. Those controls still worked fine, somehow.

Will of the Force, perhaps, he thought with no small bit of lightheaded amusement.

He was still a strong Jedi in most regards, but similar to Obi-Wan, the war and grief had aged him prematurely, and he could no longer control his internal physiological responses as he once could. He could already feel the bitter cold of space sting deep into his bones as his mind struggled with less and less oxygen.

But it was alright, he decided.

All things considered, there were far worse ways someone, especially a Jedi, could die. 

As much as he’d had to do things he regretted, especially during the war, there were at least equally as many things he could look back on with no shame, and even a small amount of pride.

Master Yoda would probably grieve him, in his quiet, accepting, unspoken fashion. Depa, Kanan, Obi-Wan would grieve him, but they would certainly be able to move past it. There would probably be more Padawans and young Knights who’d just be surprised he could actually die just like any other.

He’d lost sensation in his limbs minutes ago. He couldn’t keep his eyes open, and even his sense of the Force was swiftly blurring.

It was alright. He’d be leaving good people and important work behind, but all were in capable hands. And he was tired - so very tired.

He thought, bizarrely, that he felt the faintest brush of warmth against his cheek.

He didn’t know what would happen, but he could confidently say he’d not only survived, but lived. It was enough.

***************************

 

He regained awareness in a place that was nowhere, but everywhere. The clearest, star-filled night overlaid with the most peaceful day, against the most vibrant of nebulas in the space beyond. Where he could feel the currents of the universe move through him as never before, and yet sense a more substantial shape of himself simply by willing it. He could hear echoes of birth and death like ocean waves in the distance. They created each other, and thus mattered in equal measures.

But why was he the only one in this strange presentation of a place? Surely there must have been others across the galaxy who died at a similar time… perhaps his own perception of the Force was creating-

“Master!”

His energy molded into vague shape went very still. It was not the voice his ears knew so well - that deeper voice belonged to one who still lived. But the essence of it… the hope, the innocence…

his soul recognized it perfectly.

Luminous being that he now was, he still wanted to weep for joy, for gratitude.

Then the spirit of Obi-Wan, his Obi-Wan, his beloved Padawan taken too soon, was rushing at him, and Mace flew to meet him.

He willed into being a semblance of a torso for his boy to throw himself against, willed arms to clutch him close, willed a heart for the whole, healed child-soldier to press his cheek to. 

They stayed that way for seconds that could have been centuries.

The youth smiled up at him.

“I’m so proud of you, Master. You helped make everything worth it. You’d better not have blamed yourself, because I didn’t. I knew you’d find us eventually.”

Us?

Ah, of course. For there, just beyond, he could recognize them, even having never before seen them as they were now. 

Qui-Gon, looking happy and proud and so, so grateful. Tahl, beaming and exasperated all at once. Micah, serene, and so many of his brave, wonderful soldiers. He could see them so clearly.

“Welcome home, Master.”

And feeling so impossibly cleansed, feeling no pain and shedding blood no longer, surrounded by his friends and family, holding his son of spirit he was happy to share with another, and knowing the rest of his family would find him in turn - when their time came, no sooner and no later - Mace Windu smiled, laughed with no restraint.

He was home.


End file.
